Oxidative coupling of arenes by dual C−H activation, thereby avoiding prefunctionalization of coupling partners, is the ideal way to synthesize biaryls. This letter reports a palladium-catalyzed regioselective oxidative arylation of furan-2-carbonyl compounds with simple arenes to 5-arylfuran-2-carbonyls.The key for the high regioselectivity is the use of F + oxidants. The reaction is proposed to proceed through a Pd(II)−Pd(IV) catalytic cycle, wherein the substrates are activated by an electrophilic palladation mechanism, supported by preliminary mechanistic evidence.

NHC pumping on your stereo: A general N‐heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalyzed methodology for insertion of CO2 into N‐tosyl aziridines giving 3,5‐disubstituted and 3,4,5‐trisubstituted oxazolidin‐2‐ones is developed. This method is also applied for the stereoselective synthesis of (4R,5R)‐4‐methyl‐5‐phenyloxazolidin‐2‐one.

An efficient synthesis of di-and trisubstituted oxazolidinones is described by IPrCl-catalyzed carboxylation of N-tosyl aziridines (I) and (V) with carbon dioxide. The reaction proceeds with retention of the configuration of a trans-disubstituted aziridine and is also successfully applied to an enantiopure aziridine (V). -(SEAYAD*, J.; SEAYAD, A. M.; NG, J. K. P.; CHAI, C. L. L.; ChemCatChem 4 (2012) 6, 774-777, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cctc.201200080 ; Inst. Chem. Eng. Sci., Singapore 138665, Singapore; Eng.) -Mischke 41-131